Bitcoin Forum

As the title says, why are new members actually allowed to post in the lending boards?
I'd say that 90% of new members who start threads in the lending boards, are doing so because they're looking for no-collateral loans.

It just seems like it would be far better to make that board only accessible to member rank or higher.

Sure, you take away the chance for them to get a loan with collateral, but has anyone ever given out a loan to a newbie with them providing acceptable collateral?
Just seems like a no-brainer to me, since it's very weird to come to this forum and immediately ask for a loan.

If people want a loan with collateral, there are numerous other platforms they could use for that.

Do tell me if you think I'm wrong about this, maybe I'm completely underestimating how many newbies actually to take out loans with collateral.

Lending in general on this forum is just a weird phenomenon to me.

I see all these members asking for a loan with ETH collateral, or some other altcoin - i mean why not sell those if you really need bitcoin/money? Doesn't make sense to me.

People who aren't borrowing money based on their reputation seem to do so only to increase their reputation, (by opening an overcollateralized loan with someone from DT1), simple trust farming. (I do suspect that some non-collateral loans are also taken out for that purpose.)

The whole section is a mess. I've yet to see a newbie take out a collateralized loan with my own eyes.

May be they can but I have seen some members with positive feedback from lender, sometimes it worst to see that even if someone lend with collateral, they get a positive feedback, while lender didn't risk a single penny.

This because probably they want positive feedback, can be called as feedback farming.

@AdolfinWolf

The reasoning given in one of the Lending board sticky threads is this:


Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=577765.0

But yeah, I haven't seen a newbie ask for a loan while providing collateral either. Currently they're just spamming the forum with outrageous loan requests and wasting everyone's time.

Not using ETH but Altcoin in general to answer this question. For those requesting for the loan (for trading) I'm positive the reason must be, they believe to still profit via price increase of the altcoin they're offering as collateral and not willing to sell yet for cash. It's a win-win situation when you get a loan, profit from the loan and  still profit when you get your collateral back (hopefully price most have raisen then) although not with this current market situation guess that's why the board isn't recieving much genuine loan request.

@OP, the suggestion seems promising as it'll discourage the loan spam request observe from mostly newbie accounts with first post on the lending board. Restrict the board to just member rank above and this issue (no collateral loan spam by unestablished members) will be reduced.

Right? Besides, something I'd like to add to that, is that I've always though of the lending board to be something that's targeted especially at the Bitcointalk community.
I mean, Bitcointalk is not trying to become a general loan platform, there are enough other and better options for that.

Makes sense to have the lending board there for trusted members, but not just anyone who's just signed up to try and get a "quick and easy" loan

Theymos probably doesn't want to restrict users and there will be times when new users will be able to get loans genuine or not, but it's not against the forum rules for them to ask with or without collateral and it's something the staff wouldn't get involved with anyway so it's left up to the users to police. The lending section is mostly pointless to me anyway. I think most of the people who use it do so just to try easily build up some reputation or easily get some positive feedback. Taking out a loan when you have adequate collateral seems silly to me. Why do you need a loan if you have the money in something else? I wouldn't necessarily be against restricting it to certain users, but I think it's best just to leave it as it is because people will still come here to ask for loans whether they're allowed in that section or not. For those that do it's best just to tell them that they're almost certainly not going to get a loan without some form of collateral.